Tag Archives: medical marijuana

Medical marijuana patients in Canada can expect a 50-100% increase in the cost of medication next year, all so that large commercial interests can monopolize the habilitative herb, CBC News reports.

Health Canada has banned private-dwelling production of this 34-million-year-old plant, because the Mounties complained about missing out on taxes for weed sold outside the licensed market. Actually, they called the activity “criminal” because, after all, no matter that the plant is safer and more effective than many lab-drugs, the government criminalized it.

Talk about dying to get your freedom. Dana Beal, a well-known drug war activist, literally did just that on his way to the slammer. Beal — one of the founders of the Yippee movement and chief organizer of the Global Marijuana March was busted in Wisconsin for possessing 169 pounds of medical marijuana. Earlier this year he was sentenced to five years, half to be served in prison and half on probation.

He had served 9 months, but soon after being sentenced and on his way to prison, a strange thing happened to him; he had a heart attack and claims he died. Miraculously he was revived and treated and then the authorities calculated the consequences of keeping Dana in prison. He needed heart surgery and they decided it was too costly and voided the remainder of his prison sentence.

The political landscape for pot in the Northeast is changing dramatically, with bright prospects in many states.

New England may be the next frontier for reforming the nation’s marijuana laws.

Maine and Rhode Island are moving toward creating a dispensary system for medical marijuana, and Massachusetts decriminalized marijuana in 2008. In Connecticut and Vermont, incoming governors are expected to be much more sympathetic to similar moves than their predecessors were. New Hampshire’s legislature passed a medical-marijuana bill this year, but its upper house failed to override a veto by Gov. John Lynch.

It’s not just about us. If Californians legalize marijuana on Nov. 2, maybe Mexico will end its horrific drug war.

The “war on drugs,” like the war on terror, is a simplistic and brutally stupid solution imposed on a complex, multifaceted human problem, born out of the notion that you can take evil out of context and eradicate it with the firepower of righteousness. Science and the arts have long ago moved on to new realms of awareness, but we’re still playing politics the way we did in the 19th century — or the 12th or 1st — with the primary difference being that we have the capacity to do far more harm these days.